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Last month, the Rappahannock Planning Commission held a public hearing on James P. Miles application to rezone less than (me acre on Route 729 in Estes from agriculture to commercial for a garage and vehicle inspection station. Comments from adjoining landowners at the hearing point out the county's need for conditional zoning, a tool intended to give local government more control and flexibility in land use.
No one in the neighborhood is opposed to Jerry Mills running a garage on the land to the rear of his parents’ country store. Neighbors already take their cars to him for repairs at the shop he’s operated for several years. He’s earned a reputation for being one of the county’s best mechanics. Customers say he’s reliable, honest and reasonable and stands by his work.
But several of the adjoining landowners are opposed to the rezoning and their opposition is raising a wall between neighbors who are also friends. They are against granting the rezoning because they’re afraid that future owners of the property may use the land in a manner incompatible with the farming and residential area.
County ordinances do not allow garages in an agricultural zone with a special use permit, the route suggested by Mills’ neighbors. The only way he can legally operate his garage is to have the land rezoned to commercial. In that zone, auto service stations are a use allowed by right. But once rezoned, pressing and dry cleaning plants, printing plants, commercial dairies, veterinary hospitals and kennels, retail stores, sanitariums, hospitals and pursing homes are just a few of the other uses also allowed by right. The neighbors aren’t worried about what Jerry Mills will do on his commercially zoned land. They care about what future owners may do.
It might be too late to alleviate concern over reprecussions of this particular zoning request. The supervisors, however, can take steps to ensure that a similar situation never arises again. The answer is adoption of conditional zoning, a move proposed by former commonwealth attorney George Davis and already taken in Fauquier County and the town of Remington.
Under state enabling legislation, local zoning ordinances may provide for a landowner to voluntarily offer to meet reasonable conditions in seeking a rezoning of his land. The proffer must be made in writing prior to the public hearing on the rezoning application. Other criteria set by the state require
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